The present invention relates in general to the field of portable digital devices, and in particular, to portable devices having very large requirements for storage capacity of data, such as audio/music devices, needed to play and record data, including audio, still images, video, text, and music.
With the rapid growth of mobile computing and recent developments in digital data compression, digital devices, such as music/camera/video players and recorders, have the potential of becoming more popular. In the case of digital music players/recorders, these devices offer a better means of taking advantage of music offered on the Internet and are more resilient than drive systems having moving parts, such as CD players and MD players. In the case of digital cameras, such devices offer quick previews means with fast PC connectivity to communicate and store images. In the case of cellular phones, such devices offer a convenient means of capturing large amounts of data anywhere, anytime. In addition, as technology advances electronic devices are, in general, shrinking in size, and with them so are portable digital devices.
Unfortunately, high quality music or audio, images, and video require a large amount of digital memory. For example, even after an over 10-to-1 compression of PCM format, an hour of high quality digital music may still require 60 Megabytes of memory. In order to reduce power consumption of the portable devices most vendors typically use non-volatile memory, such as a FLASH type memory. However, this type of memory is relatively expensive and limited in capacity, and as a result no more than 128 megabytes are typically currently used. Clearly, this amount of onboard memory is not large enough to support a large library of digital data, such as text, audio, image, and video files. An average library of a typical music listener/collector today may require gigabytes of storage space.
In order to solve the storage problem, the portable devices rely, in many cases, on a hard disk of a Personal Computer (PC) for storing a large library of xe2x80x9crecords.xe2x80x9d As a result, these current devices are portable only as long as one is satisfied with very limited storage capacity for information, such as about an hour of music that has been downloaded from the hard disk of the PC to the onboard memory of the portable device, or a memory card provided with the device.
However, this limits the user to only about an hour of playtime and in order to download new digital data for use on the digital device, a PC having a hard drive with a library of xe2x80x9crecordsxe2x80x9d has to be readily available to download new records to the portable device. The problem is compounded with image data and even more so with video data.
Others have tried to solve the problem, for example, by using a mini-disk as a storage device for the library ofxe2x80x9crecords.xe2x80x9d This proposed solution was also not very effective or portable in that one still needed to have access to or carry a portable mini-disk storage box instead of a PC. Also, the CD player was required to continuously operate during music playback. This may impact negatively on the portable device""s power consumption and thus its play/record times. This approach has another significant disadvantage in that there are moving parts during data play/record time.
Some vendors integrate a micro-drive into the portable device in an attempt to solve the storage capacity crunch. Although the micro-drive may have a higher capacity than available non-volatile memory, it is still limited in storage capacity (e.g., typically limited to about 350 megabytes). In addition, it is orders of magnitude more expensive relative to other mass storage devices. Furthermore, like the mini-disk, the micro-drive is continuously active when the device is on and this, as was mentioned earlier, impacts negatively on the portable device""s power consumption and performance characteristics in harsh environments (e.g., shock).
Accordingly, there is a need for a small size, low-cost and power efficient solution to the high capacity storage needed for the upcoming portable digital music or audio, camera, video, and cellular phone players, and the like. Similar needs are mirrored in other markets, such as personal digital assistants and electronic books. The solutions described herein are applicable in other markets in which a portable, battery operated, relatively low cost mass storage device is needed to store relatively large amounts of data.
The above described problems associated with prior art devices and techniques for storing large amount of digital data, including for example text, audio, images, and video files, onboard of a portable device, are overcome by the present invention. The present invention is directed to a portable device that utilizes a battery operated conventional hard disk as part of the portable device. The hard drive can be either an integral or a stand-alone part of the device.
According to one embodiment of the invention, the portable device includes a player and a hard disk (e.g., a disk drive including a hard disk storage medium). Preferably, both parts are small, battery operated and portable. The hard disk preferably has a storage capacity of several gigabytes of digital data (including multimedia data, such as text, audio, image, video and/or music data, as well as program files). The player will typically have electronics to play or display the digital data files, local non-volatile memory to store a limited amount of playtime data, and peripheral devices to record and play text, audio/music, still images, and/or video. The player can include, for example, a music playback device for playing and recording audio information, a digital photography camera for playing and recording still image photography information, a digital video camera for playing and recording video information, a cellular phone for playing and recording audio information, etc.
To improve the portability of the device, it can be designed as two independent parts including the hard drive unit and the player unit. This allows the player unit to be detached and carried separately from the hard drive unit once the player on-board memory has been loaded with data for a period of playtime. In this embodiment, the player device is far more durable and resilient to shock. Accordingly, the present invention provides all the advantages of a portable chip memory based device with the advantage of immediate and in-the-field access to large volumes of data.
In accordance with another aspect of the invention, the hard disk and the player form an integral portable device, preferably having player and disk drive electronics that are integrated on the same circuit substrate, such as a printed circuit board (PCB). The typical electronics for managing the data on a hard drive are integrated with the recording, playing or displaying electronics. In addition, certain electronic components may be shared by the hard disk controller and player electronics, thus further reducing the cost and size of the portable device. This creates a more tightly integrated solution that benefits from further power consumption reduction, lower cost and smaller size.
In some cases, the preferred requirements for managing the data on the hard drive can be relaxed if the application is only for audio, images, or video, since the file sizes are generally large and continuous over sectors of the memory. The hard disk electronic controller and electronic circuitry can be simplified and a smaller (and cheaper) chip having less cache memory can be used. Under such circumstances, the electronics can be simplified and further reduction can be achieved in power consumption and cost. Also, file descriptions, including for example header information, song titles, image descriptions, etc. can be uploaded from the hard disk to the non-volatile memory so that the user can review and select items for use on the player without accessing and running the hard disk.
A further embodiment within the scope of the present invention is directed to a method of playing digital data on a portable handheld device. The method of playing data on the portable handheld player includes storing digital data on a hard disk of a portable device as one or more data files, transferring the data files to a non-volatile memory of the player device, and processing the data on the non-volatile memory with digital electronics to produce digital signals. During the playback period, the disk can be detached, turned off, and/or placed in a locked state to both reduce power requirements and also the vulnerability to shock. In addition, the method of playing data can include retrieving the digital data to be stored on the hard disk from an external communications device that is coupled to the hard disk.
In another embodiment, the present invention includes a method of recording data on a portable handheld device. This method includes converting an analog (music/audio/image/video/text) signal to digital data, processing a digital bit-stream with digital electronics capable of processing the data to produce digital signals, and storing the digital data on the player""s non-volatile memory or directly to the hard disk of the portable device as one or more files. In addition, the method of recording data on the portable handheld device can include retrieving the data to be converted from an external communications device coupled to the digital electronics.
In another embodiment, the present invention includes a method of downloading data to a portable handheld device having a dedicated hard drive and player. The method for downloading data includes coupling the portable handheld device to an external communications device, selecting one or more data and program files for download, downloading the selected data and program files from the external communications device to the portable device, and storing the downloaded data and program files in a disk storage medium of the hard disk of the portable device.
In another embodiment, file descriptions, such as the name of song titles or image descriptions, are collectively transferred to the non-volatile memory of the player. In this manner, the selection, organization, and other manipulations of the files can be accomplished without accessing and running the hard disk. Once the task is complete, the hard disk can be accessed and all the requirements implemented in a relatively short period of time.
Voice recordings can be attached to images to assist in the organization and retrieval of the images.